


through a glass, darkly

by faithfultomonsters



Category: The Witcher (TV), Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types
Genre: Canon Compliant, Character Study, Gen, Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia Has Feelings, Hurt/Comfort, Introspection, Mostly introspection for real, POV Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia, Self-Esteem Issues, plot? I don't know her
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-10
Updated: 2020-10-10
Packaged: 2021-03-07 20:26:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,136
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26923582
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/faithfultomonsters/pseuds/faithfultomonsters
Summary: Bards are always full of pretty words, and Geralt knows better than to trust what Jaskier sings.Or; Geralt's thoughts on horror stories, over the years.
Relationships: Geralt z Rivii | Geralt of Rivia & Jaskier | Dandelion
Comments: 4
Kudos: 52





	through a glass, darkly

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by an interview with Joey Batey where he says that “Jaskier became the mirror by which Geralt could see himself for who he truly is, or truly could be.”
> 
> 1 Corinthians 13:12 “For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.”
> 
> “The thought was this: that all my life had been murk and depths, but I was not a part of that dark water. I was a creature within it.” - Madeline Miller, Circe

Geralt hates crowded places at night. In daylight he is met with suspicion and fear more often than not, but people get jumpy at night and the sight of him makes them startle more visibly. It’s worse near lanterns and fires. The sight of his eyes reflecting the light when the rest of him is lost to darkness is, apparently, the stuff of horror stories. 

He is a horror story, living and breathing.

He knows the superstitions about witchers are horseshit, but it’s harder to argue when they say that he is cursed. Strictly speaking, he isn’t under a curse, but one could say that surviving the Trials and living with mutagens are a kind of curse. After all, mutagens are a form of magic, inflicted on unwilling children. When his heightened senses left him overwhelmed and aching after the transformation, he certainly felt cursed.

He isn’t under a curse, but that’s what some would consider the life of a witcher.

It’s also harder to disagree when they say that he is a beast. Beasts can be smart, even clever. Geralt has seen intelligence in many of the Roaches he has had through the years and also, more threateningly, in many of the monsters he has hunted. Survival may be their main drive, but animals have personality and even the simplest creatures are capable of more than anyone believes.

And Geralt can see the similarities. He can track things by smell like a dog and his pupils are catlike. There’s no other comparison for it, really. The hairs on his arms stand on end when he feels something watching him, much like an animal’s hackles rising in a fight, and in combat Geralt has been known to snarl, growl, and sometimes bite. 

So yes, Geralt is like an animal.

He is also like a horror story.

Near enough to human for familiarity, but disconcerting up close. Enough of a man that his deviations feel wrong. Eyes black and unfeeling under the effects of a potion, veins unnatural against sickly-pale skin. 

(In Geralt’s experience, the real horrors are always closer to home than anyone wants to believe.)

Geralt looks like he shouldn’t be allowed to exist. He’s spent a lot of time observing and studying all kinds of creatures, and once you get used to a monster it ceases to shock or frighten. Seeing something simply for what it is removes the mystique and allows for what simply is. Few people stay around Geralt long enough for him to simply exist.

  
That, he thinks, is what really brings witchers back to Kaer Morhen every winter. Strictly speaking, they don’t need to return. The road is harsher in winter, but they could all travel south or tough it out. They’re made to endure harsh climates. Returning to a hidden fortress with thick stone walls and warm hearths is a comfort they don’t need to survive, so what compels them back to Kaer Morhen more often than not is a craving for the comfort they aren’t supposed to need. Returning means making the choice to have companionship from the only people who can understand. 

* * *

Geralt is six years old and starting to cry. Something is happening, something wrong and important, but he’s never experienced anything like this before and he doesn’t understand it. He has no frame of reference for what happens when his mother tells him to fetch water and disappears. From where he sits beside the road, there isn’t anything he can do about it. 

He knows that she’ll come back, because she has to. It’s just a matter of when.

He passes time by thinking about all the questions he is going to ask her when she returns, right after he jumps into her lap and gets a hug. He doesn’t need to be coddled, because he’s not a baby, and six is too old for coddling, but he thinks it would be okay to ask for a hug. He’s sniffling now, just a little. There is a thick, heavy feeling behind all his thoughts that makes him want to cry. There is an alternative to this situation that frightens him so much he doesn’t have the words for it.

Sometimes he thinks that when he gets older he’ll finally have the words to say everything he’s feeling, and then everything will be easier because he’ll be able to tell other people what’s wrong. Right now he can’t do that. He cries harder when he tries to think about what he should do, because he doesn’t know what to do and he’s never been alone like this before.

He is six years old and waiting with a bucket of water when a man on a horse stops in front of him. The man has yellow eyes in a stern but kind face, and when he offers Geralt his hand it is strong and calloused. His voice is low and rough like the road beneath their feet.

Geralt wants to ask when his mother is coming back, but he’s afraid. It will be scary if the man doesn’t have an answer. It will be even scarier if he does.

* * *

There is a festival in Oxenfurt, and Geralt is sitting half-dressed in a professor’s office with his mouth open.

Originally the plan had been to allow the professor, a spindly old man with thick glasses, the chance to observe the butcher of Blaviken for an hour. The professor had wanted three hours, but Geralt had brought the time down by threatening to leave.

The professor had also wanted to draw blood samples, but that smacks of someone trying to recreate the Trials and Geralt will not allow that. Witcher secrets are secret for a damn good reason, and besides that there’s no way in hell he would let anyone bring back even the  _ possibility  _ of the Trials. 

“Stick out your tongue and say ‘ah’ again,” the professor says, and Geralt grits his teeth and thinks about the payment he sorely needs to get Roach reshoed. Monsters have been scarce for the past month and his purse is uncomfortably light. This professor offered enough payment to get Roach to a farrier and get materials to patch up the worst of the damage to his armor. He is in no position to turn him down.

He sticks out his tongue and says ‘ah,’ again.

“The implications of your transformation are fascinating,” the professor says. “I’ve been trying for years to get one of your kind under a microscope.”

Geralt pictures one of the man’s eyes magnified to a hideous amount of detail behind a magnifying lens. The image is almost funny, but falls too close to alarming. He imagines the professor trying to get Lambert to hold still long enough to be poked and prodded like this, and the thought almost makes him laugh.

The professor notices the slight quirk of Geralt’s mouth and misinterprets it. “There’s no need to laugh, witcher. I know you all are a secretive lot. But for an average human, you offer possibility. The chance to change. What if a crippled man could use your mutagens to walk? What if a blind man could see again after a minor dose of what makes you what you are?”

“It doesn’t work like that.” 

The professor, apparently done squinting down Geralt’s throat, sets down his notebook and instead uses one hand to tilt Geralt’s head down so he can look through his hair. The hand on Geralt’s throat is dry, cool, and wholly academic. Noise from the festival carries in through the window. It isn’t surprising that a city known for its arts has a different song playing from every street corner when a festival is in town. 

A giddy flute dances circles around the refrain of a low violin, repeating the same series of notes with occasional variation. The flute has been slowing to meet the violin’s melody for a while now, but it keeps getting close to playing in unison before quickening and darting off again. Over the music, voices are talking, singing, and yelling, and if Geralt wanted he could probably pick out any number of interesting conversations, but that’s not his life. His life is sitting in his smallclothes while a professor theorizes about what he could do with his blood.

He’s not the first. Plenty of people have ideas about what they could do with unfettered access to Geralt, some of them more dangerous than others. But Geralt doesn’t want to think about that more than he has to. It isn’t hard to hold still while the professor paws through his hair harmlessly. It’s the most intimate and nonsexual way anyone has touched him in years. 

“They’re going to be celebrating out there for the rest of the weekend,” says the professor, apropos of nothing. 

Geralt quirks an eyebrow. If the professor wants to talk, so be it. He’s the one paying, after all, and as long as he’s not asking for samples it seems harmless. “Is that so.”

“Yes, it’s an anniversary. A century since a certain play was first performed, and it’s a popular one.”

“I didn’t realize anyone celebrated that kind of thing.”

The professor directs a look of exasperation towards the open window at that, tempered by fondness. “They do, and quite enthusiastically at that. If you were so inclined you could spend a pleasant few days down there after this is over.”

Crowds don’t do well with Geralt. Or Geralt doesn’t do well with crowds. Both statements are true. He isn’t about to explain that to this man whose curiosity has overridden whatever superstitions about witchers he’s heard, so he changes the subject.

“What’s the play they’re commemorating?” Geralt asks. 

The professor moves from picking at his hair like a monkey to holding a candle up to Geralt’s eyes, which water when the smoke gets too close. 

“They call it The Monster of Thouses, after the myth about a king who was overthrown by a mob for eating richly while his peasants starved.” The professor laughed to himself. “I’ve heard students talk about  _ the monster of thesis _ during finals week. Most likely I made a few jokes like that myself, years back, when I had more hair.” 

Years back, Geralt would have looked the same as he does now, minus a few scars. He keeps this thought to himself. 

He blinks away the stinging in his eyes and the professor sets down the candle. 

“How old are you?” asks the professor. 

“Around ninety,” Geralt says after a pause to think it over.

“Interesting,” says the professor, and he writes that down without explanation. 

Outside the window, the voices are rising. Some are singing louder, clearly drunk, and others are belligerent. A fight is breaking out. 

“How does it work, then?” 

Geralt, brought back to the moment, blinks. “What, exactly?”

This time the professor sits back in a chair to face Geralt, close enough that their knees are almost touching, notebook at the ready. “The transformation. To become a witcher. You used to be human, yes?” Geralt doesn’t intentionally glance towards the door, but the professor taps his quill on the page in front of him. “We still have time left. Now, the transformation. How long did it take to stop being human?”

The mutagens themselves took only hours. He couldn’t say how many hours - all he remembered of the experience was the pain of it - but the second round had taken longer. That was what Eskel said, at least. 

The lessons on how to be a witcher, and all the knowledge Geralt had to acquire, spanned years as well. Memorizing everything about monsters and the witcher code of conduct was another transformation. Being given his medallion and sent on the road had happened all at once, but getting his feet under him and learning to walk the Path on his own had taken a few more years. 

  
Geralt stopped being human with the mutagens, but he hadn’t felt inhuman until the Path showed him what he’d left behind when Vesemir lifted him off the side of the road and put him down on the cobblestones of Kaer Morhen. He’s seen how people react to him, how they distrust him and whisper. And, well. He’s done plenty of monstrous things. It would be wrong to say that he doesn’t deserve at least some of it. 

“Well?” the professor says. The street below them is full of singing about a man immortalized as a monster. Geralt himself is inhuman, and he’s been immortalized as the Butcher of Blaviken in his lifetime. He’s lived through many times when a moment’s action meant everything.

Which of these moments pushed him past the threshold of humanity?

“It was immediate,” Geralt finally says. The professor scratches something onto the parchment without looking at him, nodding.

Geralt leaves with the coin he was promised, which is more than many will do for him. 

Geralt knows monsters. It’s his job. He spent years learning how to kill them, and how to avoid them, and when he ought to intervene and when it’s best to leave a creature to its own devices. 

Once created, the monster is true to its nature. It must be what it is. Carnivores hunt for food the same way herbivores eat grass, on instinct, without thought. When Geralt feels most monstrous, this is what sets him apart - his choices. He keeps Renfri’s brooch on the hilt of his steel sword so he won’t forget. He needs to choose humanity every time he draws a sword. He’s made sacrifices he never wanted to make, killed what he wanted to spare, saved things that lived on to cause harm. If he were an animal, he couldn’t feel regret. 

Geralt knows what he is. It's easy to believe in his own monstrosity when the evidence is so damning. 

* * *

  
  


It happens for the first time early in Geralt’s witcher career, which is also his life. It isn’t the only time it will happen, but he doesn’t know that yet. The first time it happens, it looks like this:

Sometimes, small children see Geralt’s hair and are so enchanted by the spectacle of hair so long and white and unnatural that they stumble over to him when their parents aren’t looking. Children who do this are usually young. If their parents aren’t looking, these children (few and far between as they are) will hobble over to Geralt, brace themselves on his knee with both hands, look up at him with wide eyes, and say something in cheerful gibberish.

He would never admit to liking these moments, because whenever the child’s parents do turn to check on their child they scurry over and tear the child away from Geralt as quickly as possible. Geralt can see the moment the child learns to fear him.

Sometimes, the child is too young to understand, and protests being scooped up as their parent carries them away.

Sometimes, they recognize when their parents are afraid, and look back at him with wide eyes, looking for the thing that makes him frightening, and Geralt can feel it inside himself growing, a thick coil of shame in his chest that moves with him, inside of him, parasitic and heavy.

* * *

The bard is following him around again, and this time he’s been with him for almost a month. After Posada, he hadn’t seriously expected to encounter the fresh-faced bardling again, but that song followed Geralt everywhere he went and half the time it travelled ahead of him and met him at the door of the inn, where the innkeep is less wary and the townsfolk less threatening than before. It’s a change from what Geralt is used to. The attention is uncomfortable, but seeing something far from fear and close to curiosity in people’s eyes when they see him is new.

He still won’t let himself trust it. Fools have made that mistake before and died for it. Geralt isn’t going to be one of them. But sometimes, after a long quest, he enters the town with a monster’s head tied around Roach’s saddle and a townsperson thanks him. That’s new, and nice. 

It’s new enough that, when Geralt finds a familiar voice singing in a tavern almost a year after Posada, he takes a seat in the corner of the room and waits for Jaskier to spot him, rather than turning around immediately and leaving to avoid the inevitable flood of conversation that the bardling brings with him when he tosses himself into the chair across from Geralt, once again. 

And he has things to say, and questions to ask, and the conversation lasts longer than Geralt anticipated even knowing how talkative this bard is, and then three days have passed and they have been travelling together the entire time, and Jaskier is tenacious and keeps asking questions and trying to drag details out of Geralt for more songs that he can make into sensations. 

After several days, Geralt discovers the end to which Jaskier’s questioning was the means. They’re sitting around a campfire late at night when the bard gets enough details out of Geralt that he stops needling him for information and starts composing instead. Geralt hasn’t listened to a musician fully work through the process of composing before. There’s a lot of repetition and muttering, and occasional notes taken in a notebook he’s noticed the bard flipping through but didn’t give much attention.

Time passes easily, comfortably. It’s been a while since Geralt shared space with someone so casually. He generally doesn’t travel with others for the pleasure of it, unless he happens to run into Eskel or Lambert on the road and they’re headed in the same direction as him. This bard who has not once held still in all the time Geralt has known him is breaking ground for someone nearly a century older than him. The thought almost makes Geralt laugh, but Jaskier plays a complicated chord on his lute and perks up all of a sudden.

“I’ve got it!” Jaskier says. 

“Got what?” Geralt looks up from mending a hole in his shirt and is met with the sort of pure sunshine smile Jaskier hands out carelessly. 

“I’ve finished the song, or at least the first draft of it. I want to fine tune some of the wordplay, and add something to the chorus, but here’s what it will sound like.”

  
Geralt wasn’t about to ask, but impeding Jaskier’s enthusiasm feels wrong somehow, so he listens. 

The song gallops through a contract Jaskier pried out of Geralt over the course of a few days. The story itself is typical for Geralt - a griffin had been eating a village’s sheep, and he found it and killed it. On his way to collect the reward he found a child who had gotten lost in the forest earlier that day, and brought the child back alongside the severed griffin head. It’s an entirely common story and absolutely nothing new to Geralt.

It apparently doesn’t feel common to Jaskier. His version describes the fight in vivid detail Geralt never provided and claims that the child was kidnapped by the griffin, but otherwise the gist of what happened is the same and it avoids gross inaccuracies about griffin . 

Jaskier says he plans to title the song  _ Monsters in the Woods _ . 

Geralt grimaces, but nods his acceptance. “That makes sense.”

“Yes, but it’s still a temporary title. I’d like to keep it as short as possible this time around, but if I call it  _ Monster in the Woods _ it sounds like it could be the title of any other song about some beastie making problems for a village. A title with monsters in it, plural, needs to have more than one monster in the song, and mine has just one griffin.” Jaskier frowns at his notebook and crosses something out.

“And me,” Geralt says, hardly thinking. It’s half a joke; almost anyone listening to the song would readily identify him as another dangerous thing that could be found and preferably avoided in a forest. 

Jaskier’s response is, unexpectedly, silence.

It stretches on for a moment as Geralt continues his mending. He would think that Jaskier had gone back to composing, if not for the fact that he’s been listening to him compose for most of the day and the composing process is evidently anything but silent. 

When Geralt looks up this time he expects to see Jaskier poring over his notebook and is surprised by the full weight of Jaskier’s gaze, clear blue eyes fixed on him and more serious than he’s seen before. 

“What?” asks Geralt. 

“You’re not nearly so monstrous as that,” Jaskier says. “In fact, I don’t think you’re even remotely monstrous.”

Geralt doesn’t know how to respond to that, or how to acknowledge the sudden cornered feeling that only now dawns on him. What he does instead is turn back to his needlework with more intensity than is strictly required.

“People would buy it,” Geralt says. 

“Not everyone. There must be people who wouldn’t.”

That is true. There are people out there like Triss and Mousesack, who know him and get along with him even tentatively. Maybe they would disagree with the lyrics. Overall, though, most anyone listening to Jaskier’s music wouldn’t bat an eye at the image of a witcher lurking in the woods. Enough people would buy it that it wouldn’t make Jaskier’s life any harder. It would be easy for Jaskier to profit off of the indifference and ignorance of most people.

Then again, this is Jaskier. He’s changed the lyrics to the song that Geralt criticized when they first met so that the details were less inaccurate. They’re still not what Geralt would consider accurate, not really, but they aren’t quite so misleading any more. 

“Maybe not everyone, but close enough.” The torn seam is stitched up. He ties off the thread and puts the needle away, assuming that the conversation will be over. 

  
As it turns out, he doesn’t know the bard half as well as he thinks. 

“Enough?  _ Enough? _ ”

Jaskier startles him when he stands up and for a half second it looks like he’s going to storm over to where Geralt is sitting and raise a fuss, but instead he starts pacing around their campsite. 

“Enough!” Jaskier barks again, at nothing and nobody in particular. 

“Yes?” Geralt cautions. Jaskier doesn’t anger easily, in his admittedly limited experience. He overreacts to everything, drama queen that he is, and takes every chance to inflate himself and bluster his way through whatever stands in his way. Jaskier was indignant when he was getting kicked around by the elves, but even then he was talking fast and acerbic. He’s seen Jaskier sulk, but he’s never seen Jaskier fuming mad. 

Jaskier stomps over to his notebook and hunches over it for another uncomfortable handful of minutes, muttering ferociously while Geralt sharpens his silver sword. Geralt doesn’t try to listen to anything he’s saying, but he doesn’t need to. 

“Okay, I’ve got it.”

“Your sense?”

Jaskier blinks at him, owlish. “My what?”

“Your sense, which departed mere moments ago.”

“Don’t distract me! I’ve retitled the song.”

Jaskier is hard to dissuade from a path once he’s set his mind to it. There’s no point  _ not  _ asking; he’s going to be told regardless.

“And?”

“I’ve rewritten the first verse too. And I’ll be adding another at the end.”

“About what?”

Jaskier whirls on him, brows knit in frustration and eyes steeled in determination. “About you.”

Geralt ought to have a response ready for that. He doesn’t. What he does instead of respond is stare back at Jaskier, uncomprehending. “What about me?”

Jaskier searches Geralt’s face with something bordering desperation in his eyes, a confusion matching Geralt’s own that goes unsatisfied with whatever he divines. The moment stretches between them, a long silence with only the sounds of the campfire. Geralt’s hands are still on the sword, and Jaskier is breathing as though he just ran to their campsite from the nearest town, chest rising and falling as his searching gaze falls into some kind of realization. 

Inexplicably, Geralt feels that he has disappointed Jaskier. 

Then the moment passes and Jaskier is sitting down one last time, reaching for his lute. When he moves with resolve he seems older than his young face and willowy form would seem.

Jaskier interrupts his thoughts. “Which sword is that?” 

“Silver.”

“That’s the one you use for killing monsters, right?”

“Yes,” Geralt says, wondering again what he’s trying to get at. By all accounts, he knows well enough how witchers work if he was able to figure out what Geralt was when he cornered him in Posada all those months ago. 

Jaskier’s giving him another one of those looks heavy with meaning, and Geralt is seriously starting to think that the bard must have said something that Geralt hadn’t paid attention to earlier today and now he’s expected to remember it, and the entire train of thought is useless but Jaskier stops looking at him and is focused completely on his notebook, muttering again. It’s a relief to be out of the center of Jaskier’s attention. 

Geralt goes back to his sword and the night continues without much further conversation. This is actually the quietest Geralt has ever seen Jaskier, and he goes to sleep without knowing whether the conversation will yield any results.

The next day dawns with Jaskier his usual self, and Geralt is as much relieved as he is irritated this time. 

There’s no mention of the song again until Jaskier performs it for the first time in a tavern just as distant and weather-beaten as the one in Posada had been, and in the song Geralt is described as a witcher, a man, and a hero in nearly every stanza, each word used interchangeably like they could be synonyms for each other.

After performing the song, Jaskier spins to look right at Geralt with his final flourish, chin tilted in a challenge, eyes appraising. 

Geralt nods his approval, for lack of any better response, and Jaskier cracks a smile at him like he’s done something special. The bard is standing on a chair in the middle of the tavern, surrounded by faces looking up at him, the center of the crowd with an entire room applauding his talents, and he gives all of his attention to the witcher in the corner. 

Geralt isn’t a fool. He’s heard the damn  _ toss a coin _ song everywhere he’s gone, and the boy isn’t half bad at what he does when he makes an effort. Not every bard pens a semi-famous tribute at eighteen, and if there’s more where that came from there is a chance that Jaskier will soon be in a good position to settle in at a nice court and surround himself with nobles and ladies with nothing better to do than lavish him with attention.

That life would suit him nicely, Geralt thinks as Jaskier hops down and saunters across the room to join him, engaging with his audience as he strolls past with the easy confidence of a con artist befriending a his marks. 

“Do you think the barmaid was paying attention to me, Geralt?” he asks as he tosses himself against Geralt, stealing a mouthful of his ale. 

Geralt grabs his tankard back. “With the noise of your cauterwauling it would be hard for her not to,” he says, amused despite himself. Jaskier is young in a way Geralt hasn’t been in a long, long time. He fully expects to be hearing about the disastrous consequences of his lack of foresight at some point in the future. 

Jaskier’s chattering about the barmaid and his performance, but through it all Geralt is thinking that, despite himself, he might miss the bard a little when he decides it’s no longer worth it to follow Geralt around. 

* * *

Jaskier's forgiveness is like the Trials. For two weeks after Jaskier forgives Geralt for what he said on the mountain, every interaction is like the earliest days of having witcher strength, where he would crumple papers he tried to pick up and walk into doors because he wasn’t used to his own power.

They travel together after the mountain, after Geralt apologizes, and Geralt remembers when he woke up from the Trials and everything he heard was too loud and everything he saw was too bright. He’d continued in misery for a few weeks, until he’d managed to limp to a nice high point in one of Kaer Morhen’s towers at night and stared into the light of the night sky. He’d seen stars in more detail than before or since, eyes still smarting in sensitivity like a newborn’s, and the view had gone on for miles more than it ever had. The night breeze had carried the clean smell of pine trees and the rich, earthy smell of the last rainfall to curl around him like a blanket, and it had been the first moment that he’d thought this new sensitivity could be something other than a curse. 

Being forgiven isn’t a comfortable feeling for Geralt. He’s not well-versed in it. It’s rare for him to have a chance to apologize, it’s rare for him to be forgiven, it’s rare to be welcomed back into Jaskier’s life after the forgiveness. It’s rare to be apologizing for nothing more than harsh words. It’s rare to regret words so much. 

Geralt is used to being familiar enough that he is horrifying - close enough to human that all his inhuman traits push people away, but pushing Jaskier away was the sort of entirely human fault that few people get close enough to see. Jaskier has proved himself unshaken by Geralt’s monstrosity, whether from being a witcher or from being fundamentally himself. Geralt doesn’t know how to respond. 

It occurs to Geralt that while he’s the one with heightened senses, Jaskier has his own gifts of perception. Jaskier can see people for what they could be. Jaskier saw Geralt for the person he could be before Geralt had ever considered it. With nothing to go on and no guarantee that Geralt would keep him around or let him stay, Jaskier told Geralt that he wasn’t a monster and made it his business to tell the same to everyone Geralt hadn’t met and could meet. Jaskier’s songs will outlive Jaskier himself, and continue to tell people who Geralt is and could be. 

He chooses Geralt, consistently, even after all these years. He tells the world about it, and his stories are not horror stories. Jaskier says that Geralt is not the horror but a man fighting within it, and after all these years Geralt cannot help but find that he is starting to believe what Jaskier says.


End file.
